Lados
Lados, also known as the Lion of Bactria, was a Malkavian from the time of who has recently awakened. In most cases, Lados is actually remarkably calm for a Malkavian, displaying only a mild paranoia that is not actually out of place in the world of the undead. When the true gravity of his fear grasps him, however, he is inconsolable – racked by fear and the agony of knowing that he walks upon a landscape made of millions of fallen men and vampires who await only the End Times to become the paving stones on the road to Hell itself. Biography In his mortal days, Lados was one of the Greek soldier princes that jockeyed for territory after the death of Alexander the Great. He was Embraced by a Malkavian philosopher who wanted to to make the Regent of Athens a catspaw by Embracing his trusted advisors. It was then that Lados first knew true fear, for nothing in all the battlefields he had witnessed could have possibly prepared him for the shattering Kiss of Malkav's blood. Over a year passed, in which the mad prophet tormented his childe with extended bouts of abandonment that resulted in Lados being paralyzed by fear when left on his own. When he returned, he found that his army had all but dispersed. His lieutenants had all but exhausted the once-considerable war chest, preferring idle pleasures over the peril of the battlefield. With no true choice left, Lados took a position in the court, hoping not to attract attention. Unfortunately, the local Brujah saw him as an unwanted invader and tried to oust him. When word of the planned action against him reached his ears, Lados, however, turned the intrigues of the Greek Kindred against their architects. With the aid of a Tzimisce, he fleshcrafted one of his servants into an exact copy of himself and used a combination of Auspex and Dominate to convinced his slave that he was the body and true Lados the mind, a dualistic creature destined for divinity. Where Lados the Kindred traveled in thought, Lados the thrall followed in body. Hiding himself beneath a cenotaph to Alexander, the Malkavian used his slave to expose his rival Kindred before the court, their slumbering bodies bursting into flames in the rays of the sun. The Regent awarded him with more and more power in court. Lados, outliving the original regent, reinvented his ghoul in the image of a descendant of the great family of Lados every several decades, to keep the suspicions of the courts allayed. Under the , Lados and his slave brought a number of satraps under their sway, both through pledges of military support and through the damning power of the Blood. For over two centuries the family of Lados – just himself and his identical ghoul with the occasional mortal lover who served as wife and later matron to the family before the Malkavian began the cycle anew – enjoyed power and prestige in the presence of kings. Lados strategy was interrupted by the arrival of the the Persians, led by a vengeful Brujah named Jaxartes, who had survived his original purge. Lados fell into a torpor that lasted over two thousand years and when he awakened, he was at first convinced that the End Times had come, for he barely recognized anything in the modern world. Bit by bit, in the two decades since his emergence from torpor, Lados has gathered and synthesized what fragments he can of this reality. Oddly, he finds himself most comfortable with other Kindred, even when he knows they may oppose or betray him. At least, in his mind, their evil and frailties are understandable. Character Sheet Derangement With his recent emergence from torpor, Lados is obsessed with the unknown number of Kindred he worries may have met a fate similar to his. In his mind, every stretch of land is the tomb of a ravenous Kindred, and on the fast-approaching night of Gehenna, the earth-sea will roil with the Damned, boiling up bloodthirsty vampires who will consume the world and then be consumed by their hellish progenitors. Indeed, the (comparatively) trusting nature Lados displays toward other Kindred he meets is justified by the fact that they are lucid and at least a known quantity, unlike the monsters who will pry themselves up from their unmarked tombs and devour the land and everything upon it. In most cases, Lados is actually remarkably calm for a Malkavian, displaying only a mild paranoia that is not actually out of place in the world of the undead. When the true gravity of his fear grasps him, however, he is inconsolable, racked by fear and the agonies of knowing that he walks upon a landscape made of millions of fallen men and vampires who await only the cue of the End Times to become the paving stones on the road to Hell itself. Lados is nigh upon fearless in the face of threats he can understand, a soldier tempered by war and savagery, but the horrors of his imagination reduce him to little more than a quivering invalid when confronted with the the terrifying loneliness of the final night. References * Category:Malkavian Category:Eighth Generation vampires Category:Methuselahs Category:Vampire: The Masquerade character